Attack on Public Service Pensions 15/01/09

Statement by John Carr, INTO General Secretary, on Pensions

15th January 2009
 
“Attacks by wealthy elite on public service pensions obscene,” says INTO
 
The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation said today that calls by IBEC for changes to teachers’ pensions were completely unacceptable but sadly predictable.
 
“This is what we have come to expect from the representatives of the wealthy elite,” said John Carr, General Secretary of the primary teachers’ union.
 
“For years ordinary Irish workers have been fleeced by banks, property developers, speculators and other rip off merchants in the greedy pursuit of personal profits,” said “All the time IBEC supported this elite which for two decades dined out on excessive profits. Now when their whole enterprise has crumbled because of unparalled greed and stupidity, they want workers and the public purse to bail them out and continue to fund their extravagant lifestyles.”
 
He said the government’s plan to bail out bankers and their developer friends with taxpayers’ money that had been put aside to pay pensions was playing Russian roulette with the country’s future. “Irish workers of today are seeing their future pensions raided and their security put at risk to rescue banks that crashed because of the relentless pursuit of higher and higher profits by any means possible.”   
 
“In this context,” said Carr, “IBECs attack on public service pensions is obscene.” He said corrective action on the economy should start by slashing executive pay, ending perks and the bonus schemes that drove our economic downfall and examining the pensions of the top echelons of the Irish business world. “No primary teacher has secret sweetheart pension deals worth millions.”
 
He said it cannot be business as usual for the wealthy few who expect ordinary people to pick up their tab.   
 
Carr said primary teachers’ pensions had been used before to bail the state out of an economic crisis. “In return the government made firm commitments to pay teachers’ pensions from current expenditure.”
 
For more than fifty years, up to 1934, primary teachers had their own pension fund. “To help resolve national economic difficulties at the time government took the money in the funds but from then on became responsible for the payment of defined benefit pensions to teachers.”
 
He said there was no way government could walk away from those responsibilities now. “Government got a massive cash injection of teachers’ money when it raided the pension fund in the 1930s. In return, an undertaking was given to pay teachers’ pensions from government funds,” said Carr.
 
He said teachers and other public sector workers will not be scapegoated while those who caused the economic crisis walk away with bulging pockets and wallets.

Ends.